Mirror
by Rhiannon-Onyx Moon
Summary: Rhia is a healer born in a world where magic was outlawed centuries before. When she accidentally steps into the magic circle, what will happen? Contains yaoi if you squint. KuroFai-Rhia thinks-but eventually FaixOC. Post-ending. Rated T just in case.
1. Glass

**A/N: Before I begin, I'd like to say two things:**

**1) The OC, Rhia, is not me. Nor is she a Mary Sue version of me. In fact, the idea for her came to me several months ago, before I had even heard of Tsubasa. I used a somewhat shyer, more dreamy version of her as a character in an RPG which I quit out of disgust at the noob writing shortly afterward, and then shoved her to the back of my mind for a while. While reading Tsubasa I had this vague sort of idea like "Oh wow, Rhia and Fai would be really cute together," and then later had a story idea one night when I couldn't sleep… and here we are.**

**2) This story also partly sprang out of my annoyance at the sheer _amount _of KuroFai fics out there. It's not that I dislike the pairing, but what some authors do with it… and how damn MUCH of it shows up around here… well, I just wanted a bit of a change~**

**Oh yes, and if Tsubasa belonged to me you'd be reading this as a manga instead of a fanfiction~**

/~*~/

"Rhia-chan, can you take these to Table Five?"

"Rhi-chan, Table Eight needs a new fork."

"Rhi-chan, can you help me out here?"

Rhia smiled brightly at yet another grumpy customer and explained, as politely as possible, that she would make him his okonomiyaki (he had definitely said takoyaki before) as soon as she had calmed the five-year-old currently throwing a temper tantrum at Table Eight and brought a new fork to replace the one he'd flung across the room, explained to the old lady at Table Two that dogs were not allowed in the restaurant, even if they were in one's purse, and served the family with six children at Table Five. In other words, he should be patient. She didn't stop to listen to his grumbling; that five-year-old looked ready to throw something again, and she would be the one to clean it up…

A few minutes later, she prepared herself to bring the ingredients over to the grumpy guy. She knew he was deliberately trying to annoy her; she reminded him of his granddaughter, whose parents never listened to his advice and let her run wild (or at least, his definition of wild). Like most times, she hadn't had to be told; some of it she'd "read" from him (she had always been good at reading people) and the rest was guesswork. Although one needn't guess that a customer is trying to be annoying when said customer first asks for taiyaki, then chides one on one's bad listening skills and insists that he asked for takoyaki, then repeats the process, apparently having decided that making one prepare okonomiyaki to his standards is a just and fitting punishment.

Squaring her shoulders, she took a step forward, but then felt a hand on her head and the presence of a familiar magic.

"How about I take those?" asked a male voice from behind her, and she spun around.

"Thanks, Yukito-kun, you're a lifesaver." She gratefully handed him the tray. That damn thing was HEAVY.

"Whoa, what happened to 'Yuki-chan?" he teased, raising one hand to brush his silver bangs out of his eyes.

"Being polite as a thank-you. Anyway, I'm gonna go deal with Table 10, the ones with the weird clothes?"

He nodded and walked over to the grumpy man's table. In the distance, Rhia could hear the grumpy man saying, "What happened to your sister, the one who doesn't know how to listen?"

Rhia sighed. Somehow people always seemed to think she and Yuki-chan were siblings just because their hair was the same color, neglecting to realize that otherwise they looked nothing alike. Another popular "sibling" of hers was Tomoyo-chan (because their eyes were the same color and shape and "they had the same face," as several people had commented). It made Rhia a little sad, since she had never had any real siblings and had barely known her parents.

She gave Table 10 a sideways glance, appraising its occupants, and groaned inwardly. That absurdly tall guy with the red eyes looked like trouble. As for the others… medium height, brown haired guy looked nice enough, even if she was probably a good two inches taller than he was. Hopefully he'd keep his friend with the anger management issues in check, though hopefully not with that magic of his. And the blonde looked like a total spaz, so—

Their eyes met.

Rhia looked away quickly and took an involuntary step backward, her purple eyes wide.

Correction: nowhere near a spaz. Extremely depressed much of the time, in fact, and adding more magic than Rhia had ever seen in her life _and_ a couple depressing flashbacks of his past equaled an instant headache on her part. Absentmindedly, she waved it away, feeling the pain leave her in an invisible ball. Who _was_ this guy? She took another few steps backward, staring at the floor as if it held the answer.

"Oi, watch where you're going." She felt Touya's familiar power behind her and whirled around, dragging the taller boy into the safety of the kitchen.

"What was that for—" he started to protest, but she clapped her hand over his mouth.

"Did you feel that?" she asked frantically.

"Move your hand." This was rather muffled.

"Sorry." She moved it to the wall behind him.

"I'm assuming you're talking about that blond guy, right? The one with more magic than the three of us combined?" He was talking about Rhia, Yukito and himself. At least, Rhia thought he was. "That untrustworthy-looking brunette has it too, but nowhere near as much."

Touya, like Rhia herself, was able to sense magic—not a very useful gift in Glass World, where magic had been outlawed centuries ago.

"Um."

Rhia was startled out of her reverie by a Touya approximately the shade of a tomato.

"Could you get off me? Please?"

"Huh?" Rhia looked at her hands, one of which was tangled in Touya's shirt and one on the wall, then looked at the wall. Realized that she'd had Touya pinned to it. Stepped back. "Sorry! I'm so sorry! I—"

"Oh, hello," said Yukito's voice from behind her, and her face quickly matched Touya's.

"I—! Er!" Rhia said, rather less eloquently than she would have liked.

"It's okay, I totally understand. Table 10, huh?" Yukito nodded wisely. "They've got some major secrets."

"I don't trust them," said Touya.

Yukito ruffled his hair affectionately. "You don't trust anyone. Anyway, they seemed perfectly nice, just… strange."

"Seeing as you two will probably be arguing about this for another ten minutes to an hour, I'll go take their orders, okay?" she said tactfully.

No response. Her back was turned to them, and she wasn't about to turn around. She'd known the two of them long enough to realize that a) they were both painfully, painfully shy, b) they had random awkward moments where they'd stare into each other's eyes and blush furiously, and c) they were hopelessly in love. She sighed. "Okay, I'm off then."

Not waiting for a response this time, she adjusted her heart-shaped apron and walked out the door, the picture of professionalism and confidence. This was slightly spoiled by the sheer amount of lace on the dress and the fact that it made her look five years younger. While this would be good for an adult, for a seventeen-year-old it wasn't very self-confidence building.

It was more than slightly spoiled by her ballet flats, which were slightly too big for her and only stayed on if she concentrated.

She'd stopped concentrating.

Apologizing to the people whose table space she'd just intruded on and carefully sliding her feet back into the shoes, she adopted a discreet distance behind Table 10 and pretended to be doing something very important. The three of them seemed to be having a rather heated argument; or rather, two of them did, while the third just sat there and waited patiently. This was a very familiar scenario for her; she was usually the third person.

"No. Absolutely not. I will not allow—"

"Why not, Kuro-puu? It's not like—"

"The last time you had it you were meowing for hours. NO SAKE. Never again."

"Aww, but Kuro-tan, you say that every time—"

"Stop calling me those weird nicknames already! People will get the wrong idea!"

"What idea?"

"Oh, _honestly,_ wi—Fai, could you _shut up_ already before that big mouth of yours gets us into trouble? How many times would that make, now?"

Rhia sensed that this argument could probably continue forever if it wasn't interrupted very soon. She decided to cut in before the brown-haired kid got bored out of his mind.

"Hi, I'm Rhia, what can I get you?" she said in a disinterested tone, trying to discourage them from actually paying any attention to her. It worked on most customers, who seemed to regard the people who brought them their food as machines. Unfortunately, these were not that type of people. They asked her polite questions about the restaurant, did _not_ ask if Yukito was her brother despite the fact that he'd been waiting the table next to theirs, and appeared very interested in history. In short, Rhia concluded that they had something to hide and didn't know the least bit about the history of Glass World. Which meant that they either had major amnesia, were very stupid or were proof of the existence of other worlds. She was secretly hoping it was the third reason.

They hadn't ordered sake. She was guessing she should be glad.

She went to open the kitchen door, but thought better of it and coughed loudly first. There was a crashing noise. She rolled her eyes.

This was turning out to be a _very_ long day.

/~*~/

When Rhia got back with their orders, they were getting up, looking rather frantic. _Leaving without their food? Why?_

Then they saw her, and looked even more frantic.

"Er, I'm sorry, but something has… come up and… we need to leave. Now. But here's the money for the food and here's your tip…." the brown-haired guy said.

The blonde—Fai, was that his name? said something, but Rhia had stopped paying attention. She nodded mechanically a few times and made a mental note to tail them as soon as they got far enough away. Was it just her, or was the tall guy's shirt glowing?

Rhia had never tailed anyone before, but it was easy enough. Just follow the magic. She coud have sworn the tall guy hadn't had magic before, but now… whatever was making his shirt glow was magical, definitely.

The odd group stopped when they had gotten far enough away from people, and the thing that was glowing appeared. It was a little white thing that looked like a cartoon version of a rabbit, and the glow was coming from a sort of earring on one of its floppy ears. Rhia stepped forward to ask what, exactly, these people were doing.

And then her world started to fade away.

Dimly she heard someone shouting "No!" and "Is there any way to get her out of the spell?" and "No, I can't, she's already in the magic circle and the spell has labeled her as one of the people to transport." Then there was something about "Mokona is used to transporting four people," "reverted to the old version of the spell" and "rapidly losing consciousness"—was that her? and then she was falling through a tunnel of light, and then, nothing.

/~*~/

**Rhia: Yay first chapter~! Please review~**

**Onyx: Wait, which Rhia are you...?**

**Rhia: The author, of course. And you're my other personality.**

**Onyx: (mutters) Unfortunately.**

**Rhia: What was that?**

**Onyx: Oh, nothing. Anyway, review'n'all, we love to hear what you guys think!**

**Rhia: Thanks for reading~  
**


	2. Steel

**A/N:**

**SPOILER WARNING for this chapter! Spoilers range from minor (names/descriptions of worlds they visited which you might not have gotten to yet) to major (events/revelations that take place near the end of the series; the actual ending). This fic is set POST-ENDING of the MANGA. If you only watched the anime, I suggest you go read the manga because the anime does not end XD Start around chapter 106 (end of) or 107 and pretend that anything past Lecourt/Récourte Country did not exist. Because it didn't. The first OVA (Tokyo Revelations) makes sense in this context, but the second (Shunraiki) doesn't. It skips a bunch of important stuff and leaves one extremely confused. And it doesn't give you Fai's past. _**

**But anyway, yeah, that was just in case. I don't want to spoil the ending for any of you ^-^ I'll have some real notes for you at the end and maybe a bit of explanation for a couple of things that happen in this chapter.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned Tsubasa I would be a member of CLAMP. While I do think like them, I am not one. So Tsubasa does not belong to me. However, Rhia and any minor characters I make up **_**are**_** mine.**

**Enjoy the chapter! If you actually managed to get past that wall of text that is XD**

/~*~/

The next thing Rhia was aware of was bright, untinted light. It was not, however, so bright that it hurt her eyes (although after living in Glass World, where glass panes served as both walls and windows, she was quite used to bright light). It was also at a funny angle and seemed to be filtering through something. She squinted one eye open and winced. That _was _bright. Maybe the glass-tint had had a malfunction of some kind? She sat up confidently. Her room over the restaurant had a high ceiling, so—

"Gyaah!" She hadn't expected her head to actually _make contact _with something. It had done so quite painfully. She rubbed it and looked up at the offending object. It appeared to be a standard park bench of a green tint, but looked to be made of a foreign material that she later learned was called wood. Now that the general assessment was done, it was time for the real question: Where, exactly, was she, and _what happened last night?_

Her eyes were having trouble adjusting. Or wait, maybe that was just the mist. _Let's see, there were three weird customers in the restaurant last night, and—ohmigosh, the spell! What did it do to me?_

She stood unsteadily and took a couple of steps in a direction she could only assume was forward. Then she tripped.

Rhia had always been a bit of a klutz, but this time there really _had_ been something to trip over, although she only knew about that later. A rock directly in front of the bench had caught her foot, sending her flying flat on her fa—

_Or not, _she thought, as she connected with a (probably extremely surprised) person. She couldn't see a damn thing in all this mist, but she knew her face must be bright red.

The mist chose that moment to clear. It knew a good dramatic moment when it saw one.

Rhia's face was now pressed into the person's shirt, or jacket, or something. She extracted it hastily and looked up.

And up.

It was the absurdly tall guy from the restaurant—Kuro-something! And he did NOT look happy.

"Haha, Kuro-rin got accidentally glomped," said a voice from behind her.

"Shut up!"

"Aww, how cute, he's blushing~"

_Ah, so THAT's what it is,_ thought Rhia, turning to face the speaker.

"Fai-san, wasn't it? I'm Rhia." She stuck out her hand.

He stared at it in some confusion, then picked it up and kissed it.

_GAHH. I must be blushing again,_ Rhia thought, snatching the hand away as if it had been burned.

"I meant for you to shake it…" she mumbled, turning to Kuro-tall guy and hoping he wouldn't attempt to do the same as Fai had.

"Kurogane,' he muttered, looking anywhere but at her. (Or, she noticed, Fai.) This time she kept her hands safely behind her back.

Fai was still looking confused. "Shake? What do you mean?" He shook his hand in the air a couple of times. "Like that?"

"No, no!" The voice had a laugh in it and seemed to come out of nowhere. Rhia jumped a little. "We have that in my country too. It's something you do when you meet someone." The speaker was the brown-haired boy from earlier. "Like this, see? I'm Syaoran, and you're Rhia-san, correct?" He stuck out his hand, and she took it.

"Nice to meet you," she said, the last remnants of a blush evident on her cheeks. He shook her hand firmly and let it go, his hand warm in hers.

"See? Like that," he said with a little smile, and Rhia felt her heart jump. She hadn't realized how _cute_ he was before.

Then the white rabbit-thing she'd seen before suddenly appeared, and she jumped again, this time screaming a little. She realized later that it had been hiding in Syaoran's clothes somewhere, but at the time it seemed to pop out of thin air.

"Mokona is Mokona, everyone's idol~" it said.

Recovering from her initial shock, Rhia extended a hand to it, wondering privately whether it was male or female or if it even had a gender. It placed its paw in her hand and shook it, giggling, asked "Like this, Syao~ran~?" then jumped onto her shoulder.

"Er… would you mind telling me where exactly I am?" she said, trying to ignore Mokona's apparent attempt to frisk her. She figured (rightly) that this was something Mokona did often.

Fai shrugged. "Don't ask me. I have no idea what this world is called. I just woke up myself."

"Did all of you pass out too?" she asked. _Ignoring Mokona's attempt to frisk her_.

"Yeah, after you did. It's not really supposed to happen, but it has before—"

"MOKONA STOP THAT! Sorry. What?"

"—I think it's a side effect of bringing you with us or something," said Syaoran with an apologetic shrug, trying not to look amused as Mokona poked its little head out of Rhia's apron.

"Mokona doesn't know either," it said, pouting.

"Maybe we could ask the people over there," said Kurogane dryly, pointing to his right. Rhia looked in that direction and saw three people with their backs to her. One looked male, about Syaoran's height, with red spiky hair. Another looked younger, with her black hair in a ponytail. The third looked, from the back, exactly like Touya's little sister Sakura-chan, but maybe a little older. The girl was a little taller than the black-haired girl, and all three of them were wearing very strange clothes. For the first time it really set in that Rhia was in _another world._ The fact that the finger Kurogane was pointing with was metal definitely helped with that realization. What _was_ he? Was he human, or some kind of—

"That arm's artificial."

Rhia's eyes widened.

"I saw you staring," Kurogane added as explanation.

"Oh no, I wasn't—" Rhia started to protest.

"It's all right. This must all seem very strange to you. You've never been out of Glass World, right?"

_Oh wow, the guy's a big softie despite the scary demeanor,_ Rhia realized. Why hadn't she seen that before? Probably because she had been trying not to look at any of them too closely.

"What… happened to it?" she asked quietly, glancing down at the ground and then up. She saw that Syaoran had gone to talk to the people. _That was sweet of him…_

Kurogane and Fai exchanged glances, and then Kurogane said, "I cut it off."

Her eyes were huge now. "W-why would you—"

"To save him." He jerked a finger in Fai's direction—a real one this time. Rhia looked at Fai—_why did his name seem wrong somehow? All of their names seemed wrong. But then, the name she was using wasn't her true name either—_and saw sadness in those blue eyes, and maybe something else. She'd never seen eyes quite that color before. Blue, yes, but not that color blue, like jewels—something she had heard of, but never seen.

He was so strange… sometimes she couldn't read him at all, and other times—like at the restaurant—she could read him so well that she even got flashes of his past unbidden. Funny, his eyes had been so cold back then, even though his face had looked happy…

Oops. She'd been staring into his eyes for an indeterminate amount of time. She looked away quickly.

"WHAT?" she heard Syaoran shouting. She ran towards him, glad of the distraction, and the two… er… she supposed she should call them "men," but "boys" seemed more appropriate at times… followed.

Syaoran turned to the three of them—Rhia panting a little, the… others… appearing completely fine.

"This is the world I come from!" Syaoran whispered. "A different city, but the same world." The four of them backed away from the other three people at Kurogane's urging.

"What, the same one where the shop is?" asked Fai. _What shop?_ Rhia wondered.

"Well, that shop is a world all its own, but yes." Syaoran grinned. "This place is called…" he paused, either for dramatic effect or because he couldn't remember the name for a minute. "New York City! The part we're in is called Manhattan. I've never been to America before!"

"Can we visit Watanuki at the shop?" asked Mokona, bouncing up and down on Kurogane's shoulder. How the heck had it gotten there?

"No, it's too far," said Syaoran.

"Do you speak the language? That might be helpful if we have to be separated. Seems like it's a really big city," said Kurogane.

"Yes, I do. I'm a bit rusty, but I should be able to get through to people." Syaoran grinned. He was always so enthusiastic… how cute! Wait, no. _Bad Rhia._ No getting involved with people.

They started talking excitedly about the city, the world, the language, or something, but Rhia had tuned them out. There were so many things that weren't explained, and she was pretty much in shock.

"When do I get back home? Is this some remote part of Glass World that I don't know about? The buildings are too tall and they're all on the ground, and there's more metal than glass and there are materials I've never seen before, but other than that this looks pretty normal to me," she blurted out, hardly knowing what she was saying. They turned to stare at her. "You are from other worlds, right? And I can understand you. Are you speaking my language or yours? And you can do magic. And I'm not dreaming. And—_who are you?_"

All three of them looked stricken, and Mokona was wearing a puzzled expression that would have looked very cute were it not for the fact that it made the little whateveritwas look constipated. She felt like laughing, but that would be absurd. Hell, this whole thing was absurd—

Everyone suddenly began talking over each other. Rhia could understand most of it except the bit at the end when everyone literally said something at the same time.

Syaoran: "I'm sorry! We really should have explained—"

Fai: "I didn't know how much you knew already—"

Kurogane: "This whole thing was an accident—"

Mokona: "Mokona is sorry! Mokona is—"

Rhia: "The people are staring, you know—"

They moved away. The people were still staring.

"That _is_ Sakura-chan!" Rhia exclaimed.

"And Ryuu-oh, and Chun'yang—wait, you know Sakura?" Syaoran said. _Well. That took a while. Is he slow on the uptake or—oh hell, it's ME that's slow on the uptake. No honorific. He has a girlfriend. There goes that one…. not that anything would have come of it anyway._

"Yes. She's Touya-kun's little sister." She figured they probably knew Touya anyway.

"In that world, too?"

She was confused. They explained about people in different worlds with the same souls. Then they told her about their journey to other worlds to find a way to separate clones from their "original person." She thought Fai gave her an odd look at that point, but dismissed it as an accidental glance.

She asked to hear about their previous journey, and they told her a basic account, talking over each other and exclaiming things like "No, let _me_ tell this bit, I was there—" "No you weren't!" "Well, my clone was," or "But you missed that part! No, don't say what part, you don't know because you weren't there and I was." Mokona especially was getting a little hyper. Despite their best efforts, they left out parts of it, sometimes accidentally and sometimes—like the bits about their pasts—on purpose. Like the part about the "Book of Memory" in the Lecourt Country library. Kurogane was mentioned, then quickly dismissed. It wasn't that hard to figure out what _that_ was all about.

There was a whole confusing thing with clones and a twisty paradox. A world called Celes was skipped over nearly completely, and Fai had a pained look on his face the whole time it was being discussed. She found it interesting that, out of all of them, Kurogane was the only one who both knew exactly how old he was and looked his age (except for, you know, the height thing).

They also told her, briefly, about Yuuko-san, the Dimensional Witch, and how Fei Wong Reed had wanted to bring her back to life. Then there was Watanuki, whom she didn't understand at _all._ And how many Syaorans and Sakuras _were_ there, anyway? She tried to count them and her head went round in circles, so she stopped trying.

She also noticed Fai's reaction whenever Sakura's clone was mentioned. He'd been in love with her, Rhia realized with a little shock, or at least had loved her very much, even though he'd known from the beginning that she wasn't a "real person." It wasn't hard to figure out why _he'd_ stayed with Syaoran when he made the decision to travel like this. And Kurogane… he must have done it for Fai…

Then they asked about her world. She explained about magic having been outlawed because the government thought it was unnatural. It had been two centuries, but the government still thought the same way. She explained about minerals—diamonds, opals, pyrite, chrysoprase, and all the others—having been outlawed too because they were said to help magic users focus and strengthen their powers. They had all been either destroyed or shipped off-world (but that last might only be a legend) by 150 years before. She explained the complicated politics as best she could, not understanding them too well herself. (They didn't get it.) She explained the technology (advanced), architecture (only half on the ground and all glass and metal), and fashions (basically whatever anyone felt like wearing, with standard clothes being loose-fitting glassfiber robes and other clothing being "vintage"). Several times one of the four remarked that her world sounded similar to Piffle World, or Lecourt Country without magic. From what she had heard, she was inclined to agree.

They also wanted to know about her friends—Touya, Yukito, Touya's five-years-younger sister Sakura and her best friend Tomoyo (here Kurogane started and wore an expression that was half hope and half annoyance). The only people they didn't seem to know were Akizuki Nakuru-san*, the somewhat eccentric manager of the restaurant, and the other waitress Aria (short for Arianrhod). Rhia told them stories of the restaurant, Ruby Moon, but none of what her life was like before that. When asked, she said she didn't know. She had no memories before the time she was—or looked—about fifteen. Nakuru-san had taken her in and she'd worked for the restaurant ever since. She had never gone to school, at least not that she remembered; she seemed to "just know" a lot of things, leading her to believe that she had been schooled pretty extensively before she got amnesia.

Kurogane suggested that she might have made a wish at Yuuko's shop, and she agreed that this was entirely possible. Fai kept quiet, but she could tell that he suspected something different—and that she wasn't telling the whole truth. He knew more than he let on. He might even know something she didn't—like who she really was…

/~*~/

They had been sitting on the bench for what must have been hours, but Rhia wasn't sure. Time was not her strong point. All she knew was that she was starving. When was the last time she'd eaten? Yesterday at Ruby's, before her shift started? Or wait, what time was it anyway? It looked like late afternoon, but surely she couldn't have been asleep that long… _Could she?_

As if in answer to her thoughts, Syaoran said, "You know, it's getting late and I'm getting kind of hungry. Why don't we go get something to eat?"

"Yes please," Rhia said gratefully, thinking how odd it would seem to be on the receiving end of restaurant food for once—food she hadn't helped prepare herself. Ruby's—the general nickname for Ruby Moon, despite the manager's name being Nakuru—was short-staffed, so everyone, even Nakuru-san, had to help out in the kitchen plus bussing and waiting tables.

They walked around for a few blocks to find a good restaurant. Rhia privately wanted to go on a carriage ride—horses and carriages were both obsolete in Glass World, but she had heard stories about them—but she knew that they didn't have any of that world's currency. Nonetheless, she gave them a longing look as she walked past them.

Kurogane and Syaoran were both pretty quiet the whole way. Syaoran seemed to be trying to get directions and then trying to remember them, and he led them around the city silently but for random mumblings of "Was it left or right here?" or "Hang on, this is 42nd street and we're supposed to be on 40th. Or was that 24th?"

Kurogane maintained his silence except to confer with Syaoran (he appeared to know the directions better than Syaoran did) and to yell at Mokona for getting in his way/hiding in his clothes/hiding in Syaoran's clothes/being white and fluffy/breathing… Rhia could tell he was starving too and annoyed as heck (at Syaoran occasionally, but mostly at the world for not providing instant food). He was also worrying about where to get the money, though he didn't mention it.

Fai, on the other hand, was overly cheerful. He and Rhia stayed at the back, and he seemed to be trying to cheer her up. It was actually working, too.

"I'm just going to stay back and hope they don't ask me to help," he said when they first started walking, laughing a little. "I'm horrible with directions."

Rhia smiled wanly. "Me too. And I'm so clumsy that I can never find my way anywhere without both taking a wrong turn and tripping over a street sign." Fai was laughing, and oddly she found herself laughing too. "But hey, I think this language must be a variant of mine or something, because I can read the signs."

"That's good. If we have to be separated Kuro-tan and I can each take along a translator."

She giggled, then sobered up suddenly. "Do you suppose the money might be the same too?"

"It's entirely possible. Your world could be a future version of this one, or a parallel version with most things the same but one or two major changes to the history. The money might or might not have been one of the changes."

She eyed him appraisingly. This guy was definitely smarter than he looked. "That would be nice," she said, "since I've got my paycheck and some tips in my apron pocket. I'm not really sure how much it adds up to, though."

"Maybe we should be trying to find a bank instead of a restaurant."

"Well, that shouldn't be hard, since there's one right over there—and the restaurant too!" Rhia grinned and broke into a run for the bank steps, not stopping to look whether anyone was following her. She burst into the main lobby, panting, and went up to one of those little window thingies that she could never remember the names of, pulling out the money from her apron.

"Are you able to exchange this for the currency here?" she asked in a rush, thrusting the check and bills at the bank teller. The woman, who looked to be in her twenties and very glamorous by Rhia's standards, examined the money with a puzzled expression on her face.

"Well, I don't know. The money looks like euros—it really should be euros—but there are a couple of funny things about it… and anyway, don't you have a traveler's check or something you could—"

"Can you just exchange it? Please? I'm in a hurry." Rhia rocked back and forth on her heels, hanging onto the edge of the high desk.

"Er—all right, fine." The woman swiftly counted the tip money, then counted out some other money, did something with the check and handed Rhia a stack of bills. "I'm really not supposed to be doing this, you know, but… I assume you had to come here unexpectedly and all, so…. here you are. That check comes out to four thousand dollars, and the rest of the money is $250."

"Only—only four thousand? That's not much, is it? Or… is it here…?"

"Hon, that's a hell of a lot of money to be carrying around. Whatever country you're from must have a pretty damn inflated economy."

"You could say that." Rhia grinned, putting the money in her apron pocket. "Thank you!" And she ran back out, leaving the woman to stare after her and wonder where, exactly, was this country she came from where euros had funny-looking buildings in the sky on them…

/~*~/

She found the others waiting for her outside the restaurant (Mokona pretending to be a stuffed toy) and ran towards them, waving her arms.

"I got money~" she sang out. "More than four thousand dollars. The lady said that's a lot here. It's not all that much back home. Can we get food now?"

They stared at her, then all at once, all four of them were laughing.

/~*~/

**A/N:**

**Oh wow, my second chapter is done already! It's nearly twice the length of the last one… hopefully that's long enough~**

***= Nakuru-san was a Cardcaptor Sakura reference. She's not just eccentric, she's a bit crazy~ Oh, and Aria belongs to me, and is the main character in a manga I'm attempting to write. I have a very CLAMP-like mentality and reuse characters constantly. It's not just because I'm obsessed with CLAMP, though—I started doing that long before I'd even heard of them, much less read any of their work.**

**A couple of other notes:**

**The scene with the bench and everything at the beginning was another example of me stealing from myself. In a show I was recently in (The Sorcerer, one of the less well-known Gilbert&Sullivan operettas), the entire chorus drinks a disguised love potion and falls asleep. When we wake up, we fall in love with the first person we see. (I had so much fun with that scene, even though the "guy" I was supposed to fall for was a girl.) The stage we were doing it on was tiny, so to give everyone else more room I fell asleep under a bench that the set designers decided to randomly put there, under one of those bowery thingies with roses. (AND THEY DID NOT SAND IT _) But of course, if someone woke up under a bench and thought they were in their own bed/didn't know where they were, wouldn't they sit up kinda fast? So I did this whole thing of sitting up fast, whacking my head, seeing the person I was supposed to fall for, getting up, tripping~ The whacking my head was apparently very convincing, as I managed to fool the sorcerer himself. :D**

**A linguistic note: Glass World is really supposed to be Gaelic-based in the names department, but I've decided to be as true to CLAMP as I can and am, therefore, using honorifics and the Japanese way of putting someone's family name first.**

**Hopefully I got the whole money thing right. I did a couple of Google searches and figured that technically she wouldn't be able to exchange the money at a bank, but I didn't want those poor hungry travelers wandering around looking for an airport when they were already starving. Kurogane might just kill someone. xD**

**I know the ending was a bit abrupt, but…. it seemed like a good place to stop~**

**Please review and everything! Your reviews mean a lot to me and I try to respond to every one of them. Also, thank you to everyone who has reviewed/favorited thus far! See you in the next chapter!**


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